'Bitch Set Me Up!'

That appears to be the very flimsy excuse offered up by New Jersey knucklehead Thomas Earle to his wife after he was busted at a New York hotel with Eliot Spitzer's hooker, as we noted Thursday.

Seriously, I don't think I've heard this one since Marion Barry was caught hitting the crackpipe in a hotel about 20 years ago.

Even more pathetic, it appears Alisa Earle might even buy it, or maybe she's just going to make this schlub squirm.

The New Jersey asphalt prince who's been stepping out with the hot-bodied hooker who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer told his beautiful bride he was "set up" by the notorious prostitute - and his wife is buying the story, sources told The Post.

But just in the past month, construction hunk Thomas "TJ" Earle was bragging to a pal about flirting with Ashley "Kristen" Dupre at a restaurant: "She was hanging all over me last night - I could have had her for free!" sources said yesterday.

A week later, a source saw Dupre with Earle at a local bar, where she was "drooling all over him like a schoolgirl."

The Post exclusively revealed yesterday that 23-year-old Dupre and Earle, 35, stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel Tuesday night after spending a long, romantic day together drinking, dining and shopping - as apparently unsuspecting wife Alisa stayed at home in Wall, NJ, with the Earles' two young daughters.

Even more shockingly, sources said that Earle and his gorgeous blond wife spend their wedding anniversary at that same hotel each year.

"I think [Dupre's] getting off on being a home-wrecker," said an outraged source, who knows the trollop.

During her big day walking the streets of the Big Apple with Earle, Dupre was dressed in an ultra-short leather skirt and hooker heels, displaying the charms that enticed Spitzer, who resigned in March after a Feb. 13 rendezvous with the escort in a Washington hotel room came to light.

After a reporter tried to confront Alisa and TJ at their McMansion about his tryst, the wayward hubby told his wife that Dupre "set him up" - and 36-year-old Alisa believes him, sources said.

But just before going to New York with Dupre, a source said TJ told Alisa that he was going on a business trip to Colorado. He asked his wife to go with him, knowing that she'd turn him down, the source added.